Mandatory Firearm Insurance Re-revisited

After Sandy Hook, I wrote a blog post with the modest proposal for mandatory firearm insurance. There is a cost of firearm ownership imposed involuntarily on innocent third parties in the form of their injuries and deaths. Injuring or killing someone is a statistically unlikely event for any given firearm but one with high costs when it does happen — costs that you don’t see at the same level in other Western countries without our abundance of firearm ownership.

I envision something with strict liability that runs with the weapon — your firearm injures someone, your insurance policy pays. I think there would be some kind of cap on an individual policy and then, something like the medical malpractice system in Indiana where a state fund pays out for damages in excess of the individual limits. I would also suggest a tax on firearm dealers and/or manufacturers with different rates based on type of firearm and the experience of that particular dealer/manufacturer. If the guns you sell don’t often wind up being used to kill or injure people, you wouldn’t pay so much. If your shop somehow winds up with a lot of guns being used for criminal activity, you’re going to have to pay more. (A bit similar to the unemployment system. If you end up firing a lot of people, you pay more into the unemployment system.)

This is the relevant portion of what I wrote at the time:

We mandate liability insurance for cars. Why not for firearms? Bring market forces to bear on this issue. More firearms make things safer? Insurance rates will go down (if true).

Anyway, what I envision is a requirement that a firearm owner obtain liability insurance that covers injuries caused by that particular firearm. (Runs with the weapon – provides an incentive for people to secure the weapon in a way that ensures, for example, kids don’t have access to the weapon.) I would also envision a policy surcharge used to subsidize coverage for uninsured losses, treatment of mental illness, enforcement of existing regulations, and safety education efforts.

Comments

When I hear 2nd Amendment discussions, it’s always about “my right”, but not much talk about the meaning of “my responsibilities”, like it’s all impunity because the owner is the Lone Ranger, and you don’t sue the Lone Ranger. Putting money with responsibility makes so much sense that only people who think about gun ownership from a broad perspective will go for it. If we were in Massachusetts or New York, this idea might have some real legs.

This seems so sensible to me. We aren’t going to get rid of guns, unfortunately, but making people responsible for the use/misuse of those they own avoids a lot of the issues with other proposals. And it is very “Amurican” to require people to assume personal responsibility..

All citizens should be required to take responsibility for exercising all their freedoms, such as with gun insurance. We value our freedom to speak which was enshrined in the law so that people could contribute to the public good without fear of government retaliation. (The First Amendment was written to protect the people from Trump, not to protect Trump from the people.) After the recent spate of killings by crazy white men, I see that 4chan and 8chan attracts those denizens to share their instability and encourage vile behavior with promises of anonymity so nobody can connect their identity with just how messed up they are. When the group is big enough and anonymous, irresponsible speech can become irresponsible and dangerous behavior. Sometimes you control a crowd by publicly calling out individuals in that crowd. When my daughter was in junior high, some dark junior high voice sometimes called asking for her. Instead of being duly intimidated, we always had a little frank talk about his identity, and those calls stopped, but children continue to be bullied and urged to kill themselves by anonymous individuals. I think all posters and commenters should be required to leave their names and real email accounts in all communications, such as with this and Sheila Kennedy’s blog. If someone on those blogs decides to threaten an elected official, that comment could be easily tracked. Every member of Congress requires it, a practice that probably prevents a multitude of sins. It wasn’t long ago that someone demonstrated his inability to be civil on this site and was removed. Speech should cost something, and persons inclined to be irresponsible for speech or owning a weapon need to realize that life is not junior high school.